Wednesday, 13 June 2012

The only way to escape schnitzel is a trip to India!

After what can only be described as an epic night in Prague it was time to hit the road again and head to Germany.  I have been really looking forward to Berlin as I have studied a lot of German history in my schooling years.  It was a short drive from Prague to Berlin so we were able to break the drive up with a stop in Dresden.  We seem to have a knack for stumbling across events on this trip! This time there was a marathon of some kind on (as everything was in German, we couldn’t actually work out what the marathon was for!) so there were a lot of locals having a Sunday afternoon stroll with their families and supporting the runners.  We took the opportunity to sit down in the town square and have some lunch.  As Prague was leaving its imprint, it was time to try out a chicken burger with some chips.  It was served with three different condiments; mayonnaise, corn relish and tomato sauce. The burger itself had tomato, onion, lettuce and BBQ sauce, however I found it very odd that the onion was raw brown onion, not something you would normally be served in Australia.  It did however hit the spot and I was very happy with our lunch decision.


Back on the bus to Berlin we headed straight into a driving tour to see the sights.  Our first stop was the Berlin wall and it was breathtaking.  The artwork is amazing on the longest stretch of the original standing wall, the only section that has such artwork.  After a short trip around the city we headed back to the hostel to have an organised dinner.  We first started with soup which was a traditional potato and wurst (sausage) soup.  Similar to the consistency of potato and leek, the flavour was amazing however the sausage was awful! Imagine tiny little frankfurts cut up and added to your soup, then imagine the frankfurts being the worst you have eaten, hopefully you can understand why I only tasted one piece of wurst and then avoided the rest!  Time to move on to main and the look on my TopDeck trip leaders face was priceless when they served us another pork schnitzel.  I must admit the look on everyone’s face, mine included, basically said “really....another schnitzel!?” But being the hungry travellers we are that sure didn’t stop us from digging in.  This was probably the worst of the three schnitzels (or perhaps I am just sick of them!) as it was very rubbery and seemed rather heavy.  The salad was great but perhaps a little less dressing would have been better.  It was time now to try one of Germany’s famous dishes, apple strudel.  Apparently it is meant to be the best in the world, but you can imagine my confusion when it was served cold.  Perhaps not a great start to German cuisine, but I am putting it down to the fact that it was a hostel restaurant and there were three top deck groups to feed, meaning around 150 hungry people.
A night to catch up on emails was just what I needed to prepare for our walking tour in the morning.  Our guide took us on a Third Reich walking tour to see a large number of the historical sights around Berlin.  The tour was approximately 2 hours where we saw the Brandenburg gate, the Reichstag, the Holocaust Memorial (which is an amazing stone block memorial with 2711 different shaped and sized blocks representing unique individuals), Hitler’s Bunker, Tapographie of Terror, more of the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie to name a few.  Our guide was very good and provided us with a lot of history around the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Berlin which I found very interesting.  We ended the tour at Checkpoint Charlie where we took the opportunity to have a snack.  It was time to try out some cheesecake as I am yet to try this in another country and it did not disappoint. 
I must also comment on how soccer or ‘football’ mad this country is.  All of my photos have some kind of scaffolding or speakers in the background as the set up for the Euro Cup was amazing.  The streets are all blocked off and large screens are placed in town squares and parks for the entire community to come down and watch the game together.  I would have loved to have been in the city when Germany played as I am sure the atmosphere is amazing, however they played the night before our arrival.
We spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon going back to some of the major sights and had a packed lunch (ham and salad rolls) overlooking the Berlin Wall. We then headed back to the hostel for a well earned nap before heading to our themed ‘I love Berlin’ night.  Before we began the night, we needed to recharge our batteries with some more food!  With the risk of being served another pork schnitzel too high, we decided to leave Europe for an hour or two and head to India and wow this was sure the right decision.  The amount of food is always overwhelming but the flavours were amazing and possibly one of the best Indian restaurants I have been to.  I opted for chicken jalfrezi and it was delicious, the chicken was cooked to perfection and melted in your mouth and the spices were a well needed change. I have however never been served cauliflower in an Indian dish before and it was surprisingly nice.  We of course washed down all of this food with a few refreshing cocktails which was served with fresh fruit making it seem a little healthier.  All of this food as well as a cocktail cost us less than €15 each and I could probably rave about this meal for weeks but when I return to Germany I will need to try a few more traditional dishes including the famous currywurst, which is served all through the street at hot dog type stands, or some of the 4000 different types of breads that Germany is known for.

As our trip is drawing to a close we are now heading along the world famous autobahn where there is no speed limit, yet the traffic is at crawling pace, with our final destination of our TopDeck tour being Amsterdam, Netherlands.  Time to grab some shut eye x

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